


And That Will Be the Story of You

by Relvetica



Series: An Old Handful of Small Xenosaga Fics I am Rescuing from LJ [6]
Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Gen, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/pseuds/Relvetica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodysnatchers SUCK.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And That Will Be the Story of You

He let himself believe at first that he was hiding. He visualized what was important easily as papers to be stuffed into a briefcase with bright locks -- things he needed to keep hidden, and things he simply needed to keep -- and buried himself deeply within himself, turning off lights, sealing doors and windows, moving no more than necessary and creating no audible stir in the currents of his mind. He let himself believe this, but facts were facts. He had not locked his father out. Dmitri had locked him in, and Gaignun would die here. As had so many others. He wasn't special.

As time went on -- how much time? he had some sense, but not enough -- the trappings that made him Gaignun fell away like the cheap costume it was. Gaignun's briefcase had become Nigredo's chest, the sort of treasure chest pirates buried in old movies, and his crisply-printed papers faded into old leather-bound books. His gun -- the gun, the most meaningful and meaningless thing in his possession -- was a dagger sheathed in black leather with a fat red jewel in its hilt. It was ugly and fake-looking. Nigredo held it awkwardly in the crook of his elbow as he laid on the floor and flipped slowly through one of the books.

The Better Times, it was called. He'd read it repeatedly now, over and over, after years of having nearly forgotten most of its contents. It looked long, but it stopped about a third of the way into its pages at mid-sentence. The rest of it loomed blank, the shade of the paper darkening as though the sun were fading as he searched it for anything more. There was no sun here, and all of the books were like that.

The pages that weren't blank were good, though, or he'd thought so to begin with. There were parts he still thought were good. Playing alone with the cat where the trees were, watching him tear around after birds and lizards and imagined mice; getting the best score sometimes on all those stupid tests; Helmer telling him he was proud of him; Shelley and Mary telling him that they loved him. Those were good. He could hold those close and not feel the hidden needles the other memories had, waiting to prick him as he clutched them.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Dmitri said, "but it's less that either of them likes you in particular so much as one will favor you when he's cross with the other. Would you say that's accurate?"

Nigredo sat across the desk from him and said nothing.

"And so when they fight, either one will go to you when he'd normally go to the other. Rubedo will want to watch movies with you. Albedo will want to hang on your arm. This isn't genuine affection on anyone's part. You might as well be any of the others so far as they're concerned, and you're little better." He adjusted his glasses. "Yes?"

"Yes," Nigredo said.

"So these aren't good memories at all," Dmitri said, slamming the book shut on the desk. "They're just selfish ones."

Nigredo stared at the withered hand holding his book shut. "You didn't let me finish it," he said.

"Finish it? You shouldn't have even started it."

He leaned back on the lab tech's station and looked down at his boots. "Perhaps if the original embryo for Unit 666 hadn't twinned," Citrine continued. "That would have been different, because then you would have been the only boy after Rubedo. You could conceivably claim him as an elder, then. But Albedo took your place."

She hadn't been speaking to him. She hadn't even acknowledged that he was there, effortlessly avoiding their funny equivalent of eye contact as Yuriev stormed through his political games. He didn't reply, and she said, "It's stupid to think of them as your brothers. They're each others' brothers, but they're not yours. You're just the spare."

"Why are you talking to me?" he asked.

She was silent, and he thought she may have left. But then she sighed and said, "This is grotesque. It's been a year. Just give up, Nigredo."

He turned a page. He was at the end again already. The floor was cold and felt a little damp, like a basement. Like a dungeon.

"Father doesn't need you to kill Rubedo," she said. "You're just the spare."

He shut her out, and they didn't speak again.

The other books were bound with locks designed to keep him or anyone else from reading them. _The Third Descent Operation_ was shoved way down into one of the corners, beneath _What Rubedo Really Thinks_ and _Things You Could Have Done to Save Albedo_ and _You Are Very Wrong About Sex_. Those were all pretty long, and their material overlapped and cross-referenced each other with awkward frequency.

Sunlight filtered pleasantly and indirectly through Dmitri's office's window as he flipped through Nigredo's chart and said, "I speak to him pretty regularly, you know. Rubedo. He hasn't noticed any change in you."

Nigredo bit down hard on his lip.

"He seems to be in pretty high spirits, actually. You'd think he'd be more upset about Albedo, but... well, they were a strange pair." He closed Nigredo's chart and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the desk. "He always wanted to the hero, carrying the day all by himself."

Gaignun didn't cry. That wasn't a decision he'd made so much as a fact he'd realized very early on, watching Rubedo weep and cling to him, the replacement. Gaignun did not, would not, could not cry. But Nigredo did. He closed his chest and hugged his knife and sobbed with all of his slowly collapsing heart.


End file.
